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"We need to invest in this country," Cartwright said. "What we need to do with this economy is invest in infrastructure. Roads. Bridges. We need to spend money on these things. You've got to spend money to make money. These are not novel ideas. We have got to have good roads. We have got to have safe bridges. We don't in Pennsylvania. I hope I'm not the one who drives over the unsafe bridge and we find out about it."

Infrastructure is needed to make a nation competitive, he said, and this nation must build high-speed railroads, complaining that such are under way in China where there are 160 cities with a million people or more "and they all want our jobs."

"The United States of America needs to be the best nation in the world. Why would we even think of being second best to anybody else?"

Cartwright warned that fear of debt can be crippling. Roosevelt, his favorite president, wasn't afraid of debt and thanks to that attitude, Keynesian economics, the American economy won World War II.

"He taught us it is OK to spend money," Cartwright said.

Holden, however, has supported a balanced budget amendment.

"You are just hamstringing yourself from any kind of debt spending at all," Cartwright said.

"Now this is not Matt Cartwright, like a kid in a candy store thinking you don't ever have to pay for anything that you buy. I have had to balance the budget in my business for the last 25 years. But you have got to maintain your flexibility to spend on infrastructure and in a time of economic downturn it doesn't make any sense at all," Cartwright said.

"Bill Clinton is somebody I like to bring up when we talk about how we are going to pay for these things. I think we go back to the Clinton-era tax rates. I think the top one percent can pay an extra three percent on their highest marginal tax rate. Bill Clinton thought so. Warren Buffett thought so. Three percent doesn't sound like a lot but when you are talking about multibillionaires. That is a lot of revenue and if you remember, Bill Clinton left us with a surplus."

He said the most wealthy got wealthier in the 1990s "because the business and investment community had confidence in the direction of the country. People had confidence that the government wasn't being run by bunch of nincompoops."

Cartwright said he supported the Affordable Healthcare Act 2010, but sees room for improvement.

"Where I was disappointed is where they didn't include public option. The reason I liked the public option was that without the public option if you have this universal mandate - and of course this all may be moot because of these nine people down in Washington - but if you don't have the public option and you have the universal mandate, what that does is makes everybody buy insurance from private insurance companies."

"I think that the public option was important. All it was, was to create a government-run insurance company like Medicare. I think Medicare is a success. It covers an awful lot of people for an awful lot of things and it holds costs down.

"Don't be afraid of government-run health insurance companies. This is not the Soviet Union. A lot of Western countries do it that way and in my mind if you do a public option, they will have a government-run health care insurance company to compete with the private companies because if you don't, they've got you over a barrel."

He said this would prevent gouging. Insurance companies are for-profit.

Regarding the controversy over the threat of requiring religious institutions to provide abortion and contraception to employees, Cartwright said he favors the Hawaii compromise which was adopted by the White House under which religious institutions like universities and hospitals don't have to provide contraceptives but their insurance companies must pay for it.

Like Holden, Cartwright believes Iran is a real threat to national security and military action cannot be discounted in countering the threat.

Matthew Cartwright

AGE: 50

RESIDENCE: Moosic

PARTY: Democratic

OFFICE SOUGHT: U.S. Rep. 17th district

EXPERIENCE: Shareholder in Munley, Munley & Cartwright

FAMILY: Wife, Marion; sons, John, 19, and Matthew Jr., 16

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